Accident and Hospital

The following is a very really account of my time in hospital. It is the memories that I had to write out for the lawyers. When I wrote this I was not in the mood to tell everything again and so it is not written in a very eloquent way. This adds up to 5 pages on a word document and its not even close to everything that I remember from my time in hospital. My first few posts on my blog home page are a more easy-read account of the accident story and have details added that others have told me and also what my mom recorded in my hospital book. Perhaps later I shall share some of the prayer prayed for me while I was in hospital and some of the things people wrote. What a family I have! blood family and church family! AMAZING!!

So here's the story, some may be repeats from whats on me homepage and perhaps I'll remember a bit more and add it:

Timeline of my recollection of the last memory I had before the accident and the first memory after the accident.

Matt, Me and Jess driving to drakensberg

The day of the accident, Friday, 27 November, is a vague memory. I remember that I saw my friend, Carla Jellema, by the shoe section at Mr. Price in the morning. Don’t know what else I did that morning or if I went to any other shops. I remember saying bye to my friend and flatmate, Sune Oosthuizen, in front of Jasmyn ladies’ residence in Hatfield, where she dropped me off and I met up with Matthew Fannin and Jessica Laubscher in the afternoon round 2 or 3pm. I still remember getting into the backseat and driving away from Jasmyn. Matthew was driving and Jessica sat in front in the passenger seat. I remember eating something (can’t remember what it was and offering to Matt and Jess but they did not want) during the car ride. I also remember lying down at one point and had my seatbelt on where I was sitting in the middle of the backseat and then lying down eventually but I can’t remember ever unclipping the middle seatbelt. I don’t remember anything else before the accident and I assume that I fell asleep.
My next memory is a flash of seeing Gavin Gow and Duncan Gow at Ladysmith hospital. Not a clear memory at all. And then I have flashes of my friend and other flatmate, Danielle Du Plessis, being with me in the ambulance which took me from Ladysmith to Sandton. I remember hearing music on the radio in the ambulance. I have flashes of being in Sandton clinic but can’t order them chronologically.  My memory flashes of being there include that of Cathy Dollenberg, an elder’s wife from my church in Pretoria, who visited me and told me her daughter can’t come in to see me as she was too young to enter ICU. Another one is of Grant Askham, an elder from my church, who bought me a fan to cool me down as I remember always feeling very hot. I do remember that it was always really light in Sandton, the light coming from behind me, due to the large windows in the ICU. Another memory is waking up in the middle of the night with my hand tied to the bed so that I don’t pull out the ventilator. I remember a flash of my sister-in-law coming to visit and being surprised to see her as I thought she was in Dubai. I also remember a fairly large nurse lady who was harsh and another petite nurse lady who was friendlier. I remember seeing the photo of my friend’s dog on the whiteboard in Sandton Clinic:

The Whiteboard - photo of Romeo, the dog, is at the top right corner

Still at Sandton- see my mom was there but I don't remember her being there.

I remember that I told someone, not sure who it was, that “God is amazing, isnt He good?  He works all things for the good of those who Love Him”, or something to that effect. I know that I had many nightmares in Sandton hospital, and was bit confused by dreams and reality as I thought the hospital walls were made of gold. I remember my aunt brought me a slushy but I wasn’t allowed to drink it due to the ventilator. Another memory is of a lady doctor (I was told it was doctor Julia Botha) who was checking if I can breathe without the ventilator, on the day I was to leave Sandton and also her being sad that I was going. Don’t remember anyone else being there, not even my parents, nor anything else that happened at Sandton. All the time I was in Sandton, I actually thought I was perhaps in Nairobi, Kenya, as it was half way between South-Africa and Bahrain where my parents were. Now, that logic does not seem to make sense. I was very confused as to where I was.

Sune with me at Sandton Hospital - wow how swollen am I!

My clearest memory since the accident is the ambulance ride from Sandton to Joburg General Hospital. I remember one of the paramedics who was with me in the back of the ambulance. I remember the one paramedic was female, had dark hair, talking to my dad who was also in the back of the ambulance with my dad and I. I saw her about 2 to 3 weeks later in Folateng ICU where I recognized her and waved her over to say hallo as she brought in another patient.
 I remember when we got to JHB Gen, the paramedics struggled to find the Folateng section and my room, and just before they finally found my room, the oxygen in the ventilator had started running low and I was struggling to breathe. I have many clear memories from Joburg Gen from the first day I was there.

The following are the memories that I have from JHB Gen, but are not necessarily chronological:(I arrived there on the 10 Dec 2009). The day I got to Joburg Gen, I met Dr Tilley. He came in and seemed to be quite the serious doctor in his facial expression. The nurse that was taking care of me the first day was quite friendly and was very meticulous as to how tidy she kept my room. The thing I hated most about being there is that I had a new nurse every 12 hours and sometimes the nurses would not be that friendly and I would feel quite alone especially since I had the ventilator in and couldn’t speak. One nurse that was particularly friendly was Maria who was an older lady with grey hair and a bit overweight. She would always call me a baby as I was still very young.
 I remember how I hated when they wanted to change my sheets twice a day as every time they had to roll me on my side. I did not have enough energy to roll over never mind sit up. I would try to show with my hands that they must roll me onto my left side but sometimes they would not understand and they would roll me onto my right side which was excruciatingly painful for some reason. The nurses didn’t realise I was in pain because with the ventilator in I couldn’t even get out a sound and they didn’t look at my face. At that time I did not know it was because the septicemia was at that side and of course the doctors didn’t either. I hated the routine that the nurses had to follow with me as I was always tired and never enjoyed being bothered by strangers I couldn’t even speak to. At around 3am every night a nurse would come and wake me up to take blood, and soon after by 4.30 or 5 they would come to change the sheets. A friend of our family had brought a huge clock so that I could see the time and would know when what happens, especially when visiting hours are.  I also remember soon after I arrived at Folateng, my friend Danielle Du Plessis brought me things to stick on my wall including photos and Psalm 91 .
One event I clearly remember is the night they took me to get my first CT scan. Because Joburg Gen only has one CT scanner and it’s such a big hospital, I could only go for a CT scan late at night. The nurse who took me was a big lady. When they took me to the CT scanner, the porter brought an oxygen tank and a manual pump that is supposed to be my “ventilator”. From the time that they rolled me out of the ICU room I grabbed the manual pump myself and pressed it as I felt I couldn’t breathe well enough and my nurse was not doing a good job of pushing my bed and pumping oxygen into my lungs. The nurse and the porter were still laughing that I was doing it myself with my left hand as I did not yet have function in my right hand, which is my dominant hand.
When we got to the CT scanner, we had to wait for at least 30min but it seemed like much longer. I did not think I would make it, as I constantly felt short of breath and was sopping wet from sweat. During the CT scan, I still remember that the lady asked me to hold my breath, of which I thought I had none to hold. I remember getting back to my ICU room and being exhausted and so relieved and then after I had fallen asleep, Dr. Motilal came to wake me up when it was around midnight. He asked me what my mother’s number was as they urgently needed to take me to surgery. They had discovered the septicemia and they were going to open my abdomen early in the morning. I did not know my mother’s number because it would’ve been a new SA number. I remember that I ended up giving him my number as I knew my brother had my phone and he was leaving at 3am that night to go to Cape Town for his wedding so my parents could still be reached through my brother. This was early morning 16 Dec 2009:

15 Dec - last day I saw my brother before his wedding and the day before they discovered the septicemia 

Another very clear memory is the night when I pulled out my ventilator tube and thought I would die. I had a dream that evening where I was eating in my dream. Because, in hospital they kept telling me I’m not allowed to eat with the ventilator in, I tried to pull the ventilator out in my dream. However, I ended up pulling out the ventilator in real life and when I woke up I knew I couldn’t breathe properly. None of the nurses were in sight as they were busy on rounds in a group. I could not make a sound as I had the ventilator in(partially down my throat) and so I only waved. Eventually the only male nurse from Folateng saw my hand and came to help me. He realised after a while that I couldn’t breathe properly and the ventilator was out and soon after I started vomiting. I just remember seeing green vomit and the nurse trying to give me oxygen with the manual pump but it didn’t help. The nurse told me we had to wait for the doctor to intubate me which took quite a while. I thought I would for sure die. Eventually when the female doctor came, I was soon sedated and I remember waking up with air in my lungs.
I remember that in JHB Gen I always felt very hot and very thirsty. When I saw the Coca Cola bottle that the nurses would carry, I wished that I could just have one sip. I would constantly ask the nurses for ice. The one night I asked the nurse the whole night through for ice and she would always bring me and when all the ice had melted I would throw it over my face and hair to cool me down more. The nurses eventually got angry at me for making the entire pillow and my hair wet so they refused to give me ice. I then asked my brother to smuggle ice in for me but the one day Nurse Hani, the matron nurse, came and told us off strongly and said I was not allowed any more ice. I was very upset so the next time I saw Dr. Tilley on his rounds I signaled for him to come over and, with the help of my alphabet card, I asked him for ice and he said in front of nurse Hani that I was allowed ice. The ice helped to distract me from the pain. I would hold a cube of ice in my hand till it melted and then hold a next one and it distracted me from the pain. Also when they reduced my oxygen to improve my lung capacity, the ice helped distract me from the difficulty I had breathing.
After I had my first surgery, as mentioned earlier, I would go for surgery every other day to clean my abdomen. I remember clearly how I would beg the nurses for more morphine which later became painful shots of some other drug and eventually tablets of Stopane. I hated the tablets of Stopane as I did not feel any pain relief from them; they did not help. I also had difficulty swallowing the tablets and would often vomit them out. I was only allowed pain killers every ten hours but after 4 hours I would be asking for more. The nurses kept telling me I will become addicted and therefore refused to give me anymore before the appropriate time.
I remember I had trouble keeping any food down. Every day, I vomited the food or IV food. I could not keep any food in. Once the feeding tube had slipped out and the nurses reinstalled it. Suddenly I had no trouble in keeping the food in anymore. We came to the conclusion that the nurse had originally put the feeding tube down the wrong side, which caused all the vomiting.
There were about 4 days sometime after the initial discovery of the septicemia where doctor Motilal went on holiday and another doctor, a tall black, unfriendly doctor was to oversee me in Dr Motilal’s absence. He was supposed to clean my abdomen every other day. This was the first day where there were no anesthesiologist to sedate me. This doctor just came in, took the dressings off, and pulled out some sort of dressing from my abdomen while I was watching and wide awake! I felt all my organs move and if I hadn’t had the ventilator in I would have screamed. It was very painful as I only got morphine while the doctor was doing the cleaning of my abdomen and it takes a little while for the morphine to kick in. After this experience I would dread the time between 8am and 11am visiting hour, every other day when Doctor Motilal would then come and clean my abdomen and I would be wide awake while he does it!
Another memory that is very clear is every time that the nurses would suction me, especially after my abdomen had been cut and left open. When the little pipe was pushed down the ventilator tube and then sucked up all the phlegm I would hold my open abdomen as it felt like all my organs would be suctioned up. The nurses would tell me to cough so that all the phlegm comes out. But if your stomach muscles are not attached then coughing and laughing are 2 things that hurt the most. I had to be suctioned every 4 hours and even though I hated it, I knew it had to be done otherwise I would struggle to breathe later on and this I hated even more.
At some later stage Dr Tilley said I had to start sitting and walking even if my abdomen was still open. They initially moved me with sheets to a lazy Susan and made me sit for about an hour. This made me immensely tired as I struggled to sit up and would constantly slide off the chair. The day I first stood up, it took 3 therapists just to get me to stand up and I felt very dizzy when I did and couldn’t even take a step. I felt very discouraged after this as I only realised then how weak I truly was. From that first day that I had to stand, I dreaded the mornings when I knew the physio would come and do therapy with me as it took all the energy out of me. I remember there was one physio who came just before I had the closing of my abdomen and he was about my age and his name tag said “Wesley” and the day he was my physio I took the most steps I had taken up until then. On his shirt it also said that he went to Stellenbosch University and was part of the class of 2009. He was only my physio for one day because the next day I went to surgery to close my abdomen and would not be allowed to walk or sit for 5 days; however, every time he would walk by my hospital room in the mornings, he would wave and he came and told me that we would not be doing physio due to my operation.

This is my much-hated phone that everybody says is not user-friendly. They had to try figure it out when I was in hospital. This photo was taken after my brother and dad were no longer in SA, so my mom had to ask me to show her how to use it.

One experience that I also detested was the day the X-ray/sonar person came and put a pigtail drain in my back. I don’t remember that I got any pain medicine and it was very painful. The person first had to place the pigtail in the one side of my back and then he poked into the flesh of my back on the other side. I could obviously not see what he was doing on my back but it felt like he was poking a needle deep into my back and then taking it and in again and then out again. This was to drain the ulcers. It was immensely painful.
There was one day, after the ventilator had come out already and I did not have my voice back yet,that will always be in my memory. At around 9am my nurse for the day, Nomsa, told me they must move me to the chair. This time it wasn’t a lazy Susan but rather a metal chair with a soft cushion. Nomsa was a petite nurse and she looked to me younger than I was. From 9am I watched the clock. I watched every nurse that walked by. Every minute I would glance at the clock waiting for at least 30min to go by before I would beg Nomsa to take me back to the bed. The sitting exhausted me. I had to hold my head up, and my neck was weak. My bum would get sore from sitting and my lower back as well. When about 30min had passed I would ask Nomsa to please move me back but she said I have to sit at least a little more. There was nothing for me to do but stare at the clock. Eventually 11 am came!!!  Visiting hours. I thought that for sure with my mom and my friend Jo, who were coming to visit, Nomsa would let me go back to the bed. She refused. I remember that I kept on calling “Nomsa!!!” in a hoarse voice, ignoring my friend Jo who was sitting right in front of me, adamant that I will not sit in the chair any longer. Now Nomsa had the excuse that she was waiting for the linen so that she can change the sheets of the bed before she moves me back to the bed. Eventually my mom was in tears as I was also crying and wouldn’t talk to them because all I wanted was to be moved back to the bed. Only after 12 noon when visiting hours were over did Nomsa move me back to the bed.
I remember the day of my brother’s wedding, the only day my mom wasn’t at the hospital. My uncle and aunt got special permission to stay with me that evening past visiting hours so that I could watch the wedding via Skype. We  had a lot of connection problems so I couldn’t watch the ceremony and when it was finally time for the reception, I was so tired that I only said “Hi “ to a few people and then went to sleep. I remember some friends came to visit that evening in the visiting hours but I was so concerned that I would miss some of the wedding that I almost ignored my friends. I remember seeing my face in the left corner of the screen and thought that I looked shocking as I still had the ventilator in and struggled to keep my head straight.

My bro and Les' wedding:You can see the laptop to the bottom left corner

I remember the times that I went to theatre and how the anasthesiologist would tell me to keep my eyes open as long as possible. The halls outside the theatre looked shocking and not well kept at all but the theatre room itself was clean and bright. The final time I went to theatre for the skin grafts, there was another anesthesiologist who was a lady and not the man who had become familiar to me.

I was determined not to be one of those people who show how gruesome their scars are so I shall only show my most visible, smallest and "prettiest" one. I Mean its barely visible. This is actually another miracle! God spared me from living with scars all over my face etc! I am thankful for that.

This is me at the rehab center post-JHB Gen. I had just walked up and down 2 levels of stairs and was soo tired. My walking-physio is the one on the right. she was friendly but stern! Like any good personal trainer should be!

This is my cousin, Carla, who came often and painted my nails for me..You can also be pampered in rehab!!

This was the day Sune and Jo came to visit my at rehab and I forced them to stay for my gym session! shame they were stiff for days afterward!

On this day, I got Warrick and Murray to join my gym session! They have always been legends but especially on this day as , Tabang, the gym instructor, was a good sport and gave them extra heavy weights later on.

This is Me and Elaine on my aunt's porch after I was released from rehab. Elaine has many treasures in heaven for  how she has served me and my family while I was in hospital! truly what a gem she is!

Minutes before I would be out of rehab for good!

Ok for now that's it. I might add some more to this post at a later stage if I remember things. But otherwise there's always the first few posts that i wrote on my blogg at the start of this Blogging experience!

And this is a literal account! You never know what it really means to be strong until you have lost all your strength and you know what it means to be weak! Telling the story as it was, is evidence of the miracle that God has done! It shows how He has healed and restored and saved! shows how He has brought me from the darkest pits to living light! And yes perhaps I'm telling too much of the hard stuff that I didn't like, telling it as it was; but, my life now speaks in itself of the Miracle He has done! And if you didn't know the grim details of what was, you wouldn't appreciate the wonder of what's been restored. However, I shall still not show you my scars, I wouldn't wana "scar" you for life.. haha how's that pun!?!

P.S. And NO i didn't send the lawyers all the added pics too..that's just for all of you!